


The Temperate Faun

by LinneaSR



Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-21
Updated: 2012-09-21
Packaged: 2017-11-14 18:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/518050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinneaSR/pseuds/LinneaSR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumnus suffers a freeze and a thaw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Temperate Faun

Snow and ice. Tumnus imagines that he is a creature made for warmth, for dancing and summer and flower-garlanded joy. He coaxes a fantasy of himself as his father before the Witch came, cavorting in a leafy dell with other fauns and Dryads under a full moon in August, and pretends he is celebrating the Great Bonding at Cair Paravel with a human monarch, as his grandfather did. The stories of his fatherline comfort him; fauns normally live a very long life indeed and there are many happy stories to keep him warm. Initially, at least, and only inwardly.

What he knows in his flesh and bones is different: there is snow and ice beside him, behind him, ice before and especially beneath him, stinging and freezing his buttocks as he squirms on the dungeon floor. He has known snow and ice all his life, having been born during the Great Winter of the White Witch; it happens that he hates the cold, hates it with a dull, impotent resentment, and knows that there is no point or promise in feeling the hatred. Even remembering aestival stories begins to feel too dangerous here, so the slow cold penetrates him deeper yet, and one more part of his heart goes numb. The weak light of the winter sun turns the ice-walls a light blue four times before someone comes to see him, and when she does, she and her entourage explode into the cell with a violent heat that he is helpless to defend against.

“So, Faun,” snarls the White Witch, “did you think that We wouldn’t notice you? That We wouldn’t know about your move to the Lamp-post?”

Shivering and shivering, he looks up at her from the floor and can’t answer. He hadn’t thought anything like that when he moved into his cave, just that it was warm and snug and that it might make a good home for a lonely faun. He shakes his head in denial of her accusation, but he is weakened; it is difficult to discern the difference between the denial and his shivering. The White Witch looks him over from head to hoof, grimacing in distaste when she notices he has soiled himself. 

“You’re pathetic, like every Narnian.” She winks and grins at the Black Dwarf beside her, and when she turns the teeth back to Tumnus, his head sinks down further between his shoulders. He is almost beyond feeling, by this time: fear has become cold has become terror, the terror exploding to fill him with an endless white scream. “We know who you are, Faun, and We know where you come from: your father was the faun Patnus, who died with the last of the so-called Free Narnians, and you were born to some Dryad from the Glasswater Creek.” 

She looms above him so very large that she fills his gaze and he cannot see anyone else in the cell but her. He is so cold he cannot recoil fast enough when she pushes her face closer to his; she grabs one of his horns, still immature, to hold his head in place. Her green eyes, hard as frozen seawater, pin him to the back of his mind and he cannot move, cannot think, cannot blink.

“Faun,” the word sounds like a curse, “do you want to know how your father died at the Northern Marsh, after his years of useless rebellion? He was hungry and cold, and he begged for mercy before I cut his throat. I stepped on his cooling body and the wolves feasted on his corpse.” The images are imposed with cruelty and venom; Tumnus cannot deny them and the Witch laughs as memories of a happy, fatherly faun are supplanted with something sharp, shameful, and ripping. It is decades before the Faun realizes she might have lied.

“Is that what you want, Faun? Do you want to die like your father, hungry and cold, alone in the icy dark? Why don’t you beg for your useless life, like he did? He wept before he died, did We mention that?” The questions confuse the young faun, even as they hurt him. He can feel the heat of her breath on his cheek. Of course he does not want to die, but what other choice is there? Tumnus doesn’t imagine himself better than his father and the cold is sapping his life away. He wonders, almost idly, if his corpse will be taken back to the forest, like the stories say it is supposed to be, or if it will become food for her wolves. Like his father. He shivers once more, hugely, convulsively. When he makes a gesture at a shrug, the Witch doesn’t notice, even though she still holds his horn in her hand.

“Your Majesty,” it takes a moment for Tumnus to realize the Black Dwarf is speaking to Jadis; the voice is a low rumble. “Your Majesty, did the wolf not say that your agent in the Lantern Waste is dead?” 

The White Witch swings her attention back to the faun, shakes his head as though to check the contents, and squints at him in calculation. The questions she asks are as confusing as the previous ones: “Faun, do you know how to write? Can you possibly scratch out a laborious letter? A report? Did anyone ever teach you your letters?”

He blinks at her. Can he write? How should he answer her, with the truth or something else? What does it matter? “I wrote, when there was paper and someone to write to.” He doesn’t mention that he used to write to his father, but tears well up anyway. The Witch sighs and rolls her eyes.

“If you can overcome your self-pity, Faun, perhaps you could give Us your attention? Would you rather die in these dungeons, or be my agent in the Lantern Waste?” Her voice is still sharp and biting; Tumnus blinks at her again. This time the tears leave little warm shiny trails down his cheeks, before they freeze in his beard.

“If I could be your agent, Your Majesty, please, thank you, Your Majesty.” 

*****

Later, when he has been released and returns to his cave, Tumnus doesn’t notice that memories of his fatherline have become mixed up with feelings associated with the White Witch and her dungeons of ice. He just knows that his father and grandfather would despise him, so he doesn’t concern himself about his fatherline too often. Much later, Badger and Beaver know the Faun as a taciturn creature: not precisely unfriendly, but unlikely to share a tale over ale, or over a cup of tea. They know, too, that he works for the Witch, so the acquaintance doesn’t really deepen into friendship and they don’t ask why he is alone. But the Faun is not able to bring himself to dispose of Patnus’ picture; the idea makes him gasp with pain, as though doing so would stop his heart from beating. So Tumnus dances between hiding from his father’s fate and wishing he could meet even the memory of the older faun; it is a poor substitution for dancing with Dryads, but he knows the steps won’t get him killed. 

Then the Daughter of Eve arrives. Tumnus feels the thaw trailing in her wake before anyone else.

*****

Returning to his cave from bidding her farewell at the Lantern, Tumnus is still hiccupping in bursts and starts. He clutches the small white cloth the Daughter of Eve gave him as though it were a shield against the Witch’s malice, even though it is now damp and slimy. Even the thin white square, though, doesn’t hold back the waves of sobbing which overflow when he closes the door on the outside cold.

The first storm of weeping is pure fear: fear of the Witch, fear of dying, fear of Aslan’s judgement against him. The feeling of terror is so powerful that the faun must, at one point, cling to the railing on the stairs in order to prevent himself from bouncing off the warm walls of his home in sheer panic. “That would never do,” he mumbles through a soggy hankie, and begins to laugh hysterically, which melts into tears again. 

Softer tears, this time, although more bitter; the first jag of extreme fear has been released and these are tears of shame. Tumnus is ashamed of himself for trying to kidnap the Daughter of Eve, for colluding with the Witch all these years, for begging to be her agent in the dungeon and then for doing the work, quiet and still though Narnia has become in these later years of the Great Winter. He is ashamed of having been captured by the Wolves in the first place. These tears, too, have their crisis: in their depths, the faun feels ashamed of having been born, of his very existence. When this thought comes to him, the sobs come from the gut, wrenching him with their passion. There is a clean freedom which follows their release, though, and the faun can breathe deeply again.

Stories and memories start to flow through his mind with the breaths: stories from his grandfather about dancing circles on summer lawns, as he had shared with the Daughter of Eve, talk among the old fauns of feasts with wonderful food and drink, and, oh, memories of laughing with Patnus as they walked together through the forest. Shame becomes sorrow, imperceptibly, and Tumnus weeps for the loss of his father, whom he loved, and for the loss of his connection to his fatherline. He is suddenly awake to the memory of the last stand of the Free Narnians being not anywhere near Northern Marsh, but at the Dancing Lawn, towards southern Archenland, and he gasps.

Anger, then, and fury. Tears of anger at the Witch, at her deceit, at her violation of his integrity and the violence of her tyranny over his land. He feels hot, livid energy flowing through his limbs as he dashes these tears from his eyes, and he leaps up. Tumnus knows that Beaver is involved with the Resistance, although he has carefully turned his attention away from any proof of that involvement. He doesn’t notice, as he goes out the door to find his neighbour, that he has, unusually, left his scarf at home. He doesn’t feel the cold.

**Author's Note:**

> aestival or estival: of, relating to, or appearing in summer.


End file.
